Joining a fitness center can be especially difficult for those with demanding jobs that allow for little free time. PT55 was designed to appeal to those people, who often are at high risk for health problems due to their sedentary lifestyles and who often do not take advantage of their company’s fitness center.

“That’s the basis of our company,” says LifeStart’s president, Michael Flanagan. “We really feel like corporate clientele—especially when you’re talking middle class or upper middle class—it seems like they are forgotten as far as a group, and there’s not a lot of programs that are focused on them as a group and take their time constraints into consideration and the level of inactivity that they have or the lack of motivation. We try to work within the structure of getting companies to support it and try to get them to see that a healthy employee is a better employee.”

The PT55 program was open to both members and nonmembers with the goal of making nonmembers feel more comfortable using the club and then converting them to members.

“We felt like we had to go to them to get them to see it and not just market [the program] in a club,” Flanagan says. “Obviously, those people aren’t going to be active anyway. We took it to the companies and started getting them to post it in their break rooms, we dropped off fliers, and we sat in the lobbies and did some promotion.”

Of the program’s more than 350 participants, 60 percent were nonmembers.

For eight weeks, PT55 participants attended two brief strength training sessions each week. The workouts, which featured exercises using free weights and body weight, were designed to slowly challenge participants without overwhelming them. That small amount of time produced significant results—on average, participants lost 6 1/2 pounds and 4.3 percent of their body weight.

At the end of the eight weeks, clients could become members at a discounted rate, and they were informed about group training programs and rates. Of the nonmembers who participated, around 60 percent had joined the facility by the end of the program. −Kelsey Cipolla

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